Evidence of meeting #21 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay. So they owe you and they owe BDC.
Are they paying you back? Are they paying the BDC?
Chief Executive Officer, Futurpreneur Canada
Yes. It's pretty much the same. BDC coordinated its rates with ours, so that's another thing. They actually made their conditions more like ours to help.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
In your case you would be happy with the BDC, which is not the case for a lot of other people who come before us.
Chief Executive Officer, Futurpreneur Canada
I'm happy in respect to what they're doing. I think it's moving in a positive direction.
Chief Executive Officer, Futurpreneur Canada
We have office locations, some of which are co-shared. We're in the new space that Mr. Arya opened yesterday in Ottawa. We co-locate with a lot of our partners across the country. We have major offices in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, just to centralize things.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Ninety-three.
There's not an incubator accelerator, where companies move in?
Chief Executive Officer, Futurpreneur Canada
No. We often are partnering. Communitech would be a great strategic partner of ours and we would have shared clients and would offer them different things.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
I started Startup Canada with savings from my savings account when I decided to leave government. It's fully private sector funded. We earn—
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
Yes, with my co-founder.
We're fully sustainable. We earn every dollar we make. We're not funded by the Government of Canada. We are funded through services that we provide to anchor companies like Intuit Canada, UPS, Google, Microsoft, and companies that want to strengthen Canada's entrepreneurship environment through Startup Canada.
We've set ourselves up as non-profit, but we operate as a social enterprise. We have an office on Sparks Street. We just moved there. We're very proud of this, that we have our first office. We have eight full-time and two part-time people. Our staff is in Ottawa and Toronto, but it is supported by 300 volunteers who run start-up communities across Canada. A number of them have their own spaces and some of them do receive government funding, particularly Startup Edmonton and what is now North Forge, which is in Winnipeg. It use to be Startup Winnipeg.
That's how we're funded.
Liberal
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
They just rebranded in order to access new opportunities for the community.
We have 25 start-up communities. They're usually called things like Startup Fredericton, Startup Whitehorse, Startup Victoria, Startup Nanaimo.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Do they actually have physical space for entrepreneurs, or are they just an office?
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
About half of them have their own physical space and co-working spaces.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
When you say there are 25 centres, they're not staffed by your people if you only have eight full-time people, are they?
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
No. It's about connecting the ecosystem and leveraging what already exists in the start-up community and enhancing it by bringing it together.
Liberal
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
No, we're all entrepreneur led. It's entrepreneurs who are building businesses, creating jobs, but also spending their evenings and weekends building their start-up community.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
So for Startup Fredericton, there would be some person there and he would be in his regular business?
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
There's a group. Startup Fredericton is led by Rivers Corbett, who's the founder of reLiSH Gourmet Burgers, an awesome franchise chain across Canada. He's one of a team of entrepreneurs that is building Startup Fredericton. They provide mentorship, support, connectivity to resources at the Pond-Deshpande Centre, and with the chambers of commerce.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay, but there's not necessarily a physical location. It's a group that might meet in someone's offices, things like that.